As consumers (B2C), we are increasingly relying on digital shopping for most categories of purchase, even in the B2B space, buyers or buying committees are increasingly preferring digital/virtual channels for research, demos, trials, and the actual purchase. This is already true for the SMB / lower value B2B segment and increasingly in the enterprise segment as well.
The pandemic provided strong tailwinds to what was already an irreversible trend in buyer behavior.
Brands have to offer customers what they need, where they need it, and how they need it. Digital marketing is therefore not an additional channel to supplement traditional marketing. I think this distinction should anyways be done away with.
3 key themes are Emerging:
1. From CRM to CMR – Customer-managed relationship: We have seen “push” based content make way for client-initiated research. Offering as much content in an intuitive and easy-to-discover form will be the focus so that the customers (prospects) can decide with little or no “sales push”.
2. Byte sized, hyper-personalized communication
3. Deeper and broader marketing stack – To support this, brands are increasingly moving their traditional mass media, and T&E spends to building a next-gen tech stack that enables the foregoing.